Self-Trust Isn’t Selfish: Rebuilding Inner Safety

When life leaves you second-guessing yourself, how do you rebuild trust with the one person you need most—you? In this soul-nourishing episode of Shift Happens with Shay, we explore what it means to come home to yourself after seasons of burnout, betrayal, or emotional abandonment.

We’ll unpack the quiet power of self-trust, how it gets broken (especially for women constantly showing up for others), and what it takes to rebuild it—gently and without shame.

✨ Topics we explore:

Why self-trust is a form of inner safety

How emotional gaslighting and burnout erode our inner compass

Daily practices to rebuild trust with your body and boundaries

Soft affirmations and journal reflections to anchor your healing


You’re not too much. You’re not broken. You are worthy of trusting yourself again.
Tune in, exhale, and let’s reclaim the quiet power of coming back to you.

🦋 Connect with Shay on Instagram: @shifthappenswithshay

Continue the conversation with Shay on her Instagram, Facebook page, Youtube, website, and linkedIn! You can also email Shay at shay@shifthappenswithshay.com if you are looking for insight about your life, send your stories, or request topics you would like to address.

Please note this podcast is not a substitution for therapy, if you require assistance with exploring trauma, deeper relationship issues, or more please reach out to establish care.

Transcript

0:00

Hey there and welcome to Shift Happens with Shay. I'm Shay, your host and licensed marriage and family therapist. This podcast is where we dive into all the shift life throws our way, whether it's relationships, mental health, personal growth, or just figuring out this crazy journey of adulting here. We're all about honest conversation, real stories, and a whole lot of laughs as we tackle life's challenges together. This is your space to grow, explore, and feel seen. So grab a cozy spot, maybe a cup of coffee or wine, and let's get ready to shift through it all. Thanks for tuning in, and remember, no matter what life brings us, we're in this together.

Shay: 0:38

Hi, beautiful and welcome back to another episode of Shift Happens with Shay. I'm so glad you're here, especially for today's conversation, and I'm gonna pause that by saying I know it's been a hot minute since I've jumped on the mic and spoken with you ladies and dived into some good soul nourishing content. I'm sorry for being away, but then also not sorry for taking care of myself. I did go away for a little bit last month. I was in Taiwan with my boyfriend and it was absolutely stunning out there. I had the best time just disconnecting, unplugging, and just being tuned into my surroundings. It was a beautiful trip. I love the mountains. I love temples. I love learning about history. I love understanding decor. I love just. Being in other cultures and seeing similarities in your own culture with others or just understanding other people. And this did make me feel a bit closer to my boyfriend and his family since he is Taiwanese. And I also got to eat my tan. Yes, yes. I could have made that at home, but who's got time to just be making sugared fruit at home? It's not me. So yeah, that's where I was just taking care of me and attuning to myself, and also managing some medical health needs. I do have some upcoming appointments and things going on with me. I am okay though. Just to give you some reassurance. I am okay. I'm just taking the steps to make sure there isn't any other surprises. As you guys already know, I am managing my Hashimoto's. I already have an autoimmune disease, you know, already with that or disorder. So we're just making sure that nothing else is here to hinder my ability to continue to be me in your lives, you know? And in my. Family lives and in my family's life. So without further ado, I'm glad you're back with me for today's conversation because this one is from my listeners who have been holding it down for everyone else. You know who you are and you are now realizing they're not sure. You are not sure if you can trust yourself, and that's a problem. That could be whether it's because of heartbreak. Burnout, betrayal, or simply years of self abandonment. Today, I wanna remind you, your inner voice is still here and it is still worth listening to. Let's get into it, what self-trust really means. Let's start by defining that and not the Pinterest version or the little collages of like, this is what you should do. No, but the real one. Self-trust isn't about always getting it right. It's not about being confident all the time or having everything figured out because frankly, confidence is learned over time. We are not confident until we're doing something over and over again when we're all, when we're afraid and feeling incapable or feeling inadequate, we find confident later. Self-trust, however, is about inner safety. It's the quiet belief that you can rely on yourself. Not to avoid every mistake, but to come back to yourself when life gets messy self-trust sounds like this. I'm allowed to say no without explaining. I believe myself even when no one else does. I can rest. Without earning it. Do you say that to yourself? Do you have self-trust right now? This is self-trust. That is your safety. That is you coming home to yourself. That is your foundation of you. Safety is an in perfectionism and being real as a woman. Especially women of color, we are not taught this. We are often taught to override our truth, to keep peace, meet expectations, or stay safe. We know that so well, right? When you have to choose against yourself, your better judgment, your intuition, that is screaming out freedom and liberation. But you want to keep the peace. You want to meet everybody's standard, and you want to be safe. Especially in a time like today of what we're living in, it's hard to override the need to wanna be safe, but. You're not safe if you're constantly going against yourself. If you can't rely on yourself, how can you ever truly be safe? How could you ever truly feel comfortable? Okay, and at peace with anything in your life if you have no peace with yourself? So again, self-trust is about inner safety, not confidence. Throw that out. We are here to listen to ourselves or at least relearn our voices because that's what self-trust really is. So what breaks our self-trust? Betrayal, as I mentioned, emotional gaslighting, people pleasing, and burnout. Starting with betrayal. This could be from a partner, this can be from a parent. This can even be from yourself. When you are constantly telling yourself that you're gonna go do something, you're gonna follow through with that idea. You're gonna give yourself rest. You're gonna start pouring into yourself. You started another New Year's resolution, whatever it may be, betrayal. When you do not follow through on your word for yourself, that will break any type of trust with yourself because your mind will start to rewire itself subconsciously without you even realizing it becomes a norm to not trust you, to start doubting, to start giving those inner critic thoughts, they start getting louder. You start feeling incompetent or incapable. You start really doubting yourself in all aspects. Suspect that you have all the qualifications. Same thing happens from family, our partners, our friends. This breaks self-trust because we've invested in these people and we might pretty much tell them something that's on our mind and on our hearts. We've been vulnerable with these people and they use that vulnerability against us, and instead of us being upset with them for violating our trust, we are upset at ourselves because we start feeling smaller sometimes. This is not deliberate. From our family and friends or our significant others. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's not malicious, but it still hurts sometimes. Unfortunately, it is malicious and these are the people you need to break away from because they're here to break your sense of self. You need space from them people, and if you're able to get'em out. Next one. Emotional gaslighting. Being told your feelings are too much. Too dramatic. And we've talked about sitting with our emotions and honoring our emotions because that is strength. To be able to be vulnerable is a strength. But people will try and tell you that because you feel too much or because you have emotional attunement, that you're too dramatic. And this starts making you question the way you express yourself, pretty much how you present to the world. We start believing those voices or these people long enough, we start to truly minimize our feelings and our thoughts because we start thinking they're too much, when truly they're not. The way you express yourself is beautiful as long as it's not aggressive. There are healthy ways of our expressing ourselves, but remember, emotions are neither good nor bad. There are traffic lights. They are our signs to let us know where we currently at. They are not too much and they are not too dramatic. People pleasing when your work depends on how useful you are. We've talked a little bit about this in our re-parenting episode. That is that inner child wound, people pleasing, the caregiver archetype. That's the one who wasn't seen, and you start people pleasing because you want to belong. You no longer wanna be invisible, and you start to feel like, if I can't give myself or I don't have any value, if I'm not able to do something for that person, then they're not gonna love me. They're not gonna want me. But when you people, please, you're not pleasing yourself. You go home drained, you go home, defeated it. You go home with a self-esteem underneath the ground. You don't feel confident in anything about yourself because you need the validation of others and validating yourself. Anytime you try to tell yourself something nice, you feel it's a lie or you shy away from it, that kills self-trust. Burnout when your body says enough, but you keep pushing through. We're not listening to our physical signs. We're not literally listening to our body tell us, I need a rest. I need a break. I just need comfort. I need rejuvenation. I want a restart. And we keep saying, no, we haven't done enough to earn that. We have to keep going because if I don't keep going, then what? What does that mean about me? What else is there to me? No. I have to keep working hard. I have to get to the next goalpost. Burnout leads to self-trust being broken because you aren't listening to your own physical, emotional, mental, or even spiritual needs. Who are you burning out for? Hmm. Let's take a moment. Just take a breath with me. Because those are some heavy things there, and I'm sure as I explained some of them, you have thought about a time where you've engaged in some of these behaviors or felt these experiences. You probably are thinking about an interaction, maybe it was even recently. This isn't meant as always for you to shame yourself or for you to think that you're a bad person. We're learning to break free from these chains. We're learning to trust ourselves again. So it starts with awareness, and let's start here. Where did you first learn that your intuition wasn't trustworthy? That's not an easy question, but it is where healing begins. Because if we could start uncovering. The moment, the people, the phrases, the words that kept replaying to us in our lives, that told us our intuition, our thought, our experience wasn't trustworthy, that we were not worthy of trusting ourselves. We can truly begin to unravel those thoughts, those actions, those memories, those feelings. Start to find ourselves again. Start to find our voice again. Our heart, our mind, our spirit, our soul. Start to find that goddess within you again, healing begins here. So take that moment. If you're not in a car, go ahead, break out the journal, write it out, go ahead and get to work. You know, I love me, some self-discovery work, girl, but yeah. Where did you first learn that your intuition wasn't trustworthy? What does rebuilding actually look like? Right? Everybody always says, just go out and do it. Go ahead and just. Be you, be strong, be soft, but no one is actually telling us how to start being soft. Where is that a spa, is that a massage? I don't know. Is that a movie? Is that me Sleeping more? Don't worry. I got a few things here to help you start that off and then eventually you will razzle, dazzle it with a little bit of you and make it personal for you. Okay. So when we wanna rebuild, we wanna start small, and that can look like keeping a promise to yourself every day, such as, I promise I'm going to drink water instead of ordering soda when I go out. I'm going to go to bed on time because I deserve rest. I deserve to feel rejuvenated when I wake up to start my day. I'm going to keep that boundary that I've had difficulties doing. And you know what? I'm not the type to say start with the hardest boundary. Start with a boundary that you are okay with implementing. And I say, okay, more of like your yellow ones because we have the ones that we're very adverse to work up to that boundary, the one you've been violating for so long. Work up to that one. Start small. Keep the small boundaries. Be consistent so you can move on to the boundaries that are a little bit harder for you or that you felt you've had difficulties keeping up with. Okay? Small agreements create safety. When we see ourselves being consistent to the promises we make for ourselves every day, we are building that voice back up, listening to our intuition, allowing her to be loud again, allowing her to be in existence, presence heard. She is a part of us. We are reintegrating. So start small. It does not have to be grand. We're trying not to overwhelm ourselves. And also, we don't wanna start too big because then if you don't do it or you mess up, shame and guilt comes in. See, I knew I wasn't worth it. I knew I didn't really care about myself. Oh, this is so stupid. Why did I think I was worthy of this? Any old other kind of things you could tell yourself, if we fail, we get back up. We learn success from our failures'cause that's how we're allowed and able to change things. Start small, my dear. Okay, second one. Honor your no. Honor your no. Even when it's inconvenient. And let me tell you, when you're first honoring your, no, everything feels inconvenient. It feels inconvenient to say no to every single thing because you are going to face resistance. You will see people's, like the corner of their mouth starts to twitch a little bit. The brow move. They start to feel a little like, who does she think she is? Telling me, no, you're allowed to inconvenience them. They've been inconvenient. Inconvenient. You. This whole time, your time, your space, your mind, your heart, they've been taking from you, you can take back for yourself. So honor your know when it's inconvenient, especially when it feels unfamiliar. We are learning and reacquainting ourselves with something we've left behind or didn't get a chance to nourish or build because others didn't tell us that it was okay to use our nose. Every time you honor your no, your nervous system learns that you've got your own back. Your nervous system starts to trust you. It doesn't go against you. That anxiety starts to lessen. We start to feel more safe. That no becomes more resound. It becomes more confident and firm when it comes out. And let me tell you, once you're good at saying no, it'll be so easy. You'll be quick at saying no to things you don't like. Be so quick that you'll be like, dang, you didn't even gimme a chance to finish the request. Nothing wrong with that. You might get a little bit too No happy as you get comfortable with your no. But remember, our no is not meant to form a barrier around us. We're not doing that. We're our nos are here to truly protect our energy so that we can invest time and energy into things and people we truly wanna spend our time with. Because remember having a community is the price for a community is inconvenience. Okay? But at this moment, practice your nose because if you're uncomfortable with nose, I ain't even worried about that at this point. Those who matter, don't mind, and those who mind don't matter, right? That what Dr. Seuss said, right? So again, even when it's inconvenient, do it. Do it when it feels unfamiliar. Do it with your anxiety high. We need to build our distress tolerance anyways. We have to work through it because you're worth it. Third, track your inner knowing. Create an I knew it journal, something like that. You can name anything else if you want, but in this journal, every time your intuition was right. Write it down because this will build evidence for ourselves. This shows us, we get to look back and see data that shows our trust building. It shows that we do know what we're doing. We know what we're thinking. We know what we're feeling. You knew it. You always knew it, and you didn't need someone else to figure it out. You knew it deep down. You trust yourself. Something didn't feel right, something fell off, or, oh man, this project feels like this is the right way to go. This is the path for me, or I don't even know, but it just feels right. Everything's falling into place. I'm gonna go for it. Trust. Your trust will build through the evidence, because now there we go. We're telling the nervous system and is continuing to learn. Woo, I do know what I'm doing. I'm starting to instead feel. Scared. I'm feeling excited. I'm feeling elated. These feelings may feel similar. The body's reaction to anxiety, doubt, fear sometimes. But that is you getting excited. Your nervous system's oh yeah, fuck yeah, I knew it. This is us knowing who we are and it feels so good to come back home. Trek your inner knowing, because when you start doubting yourself, or those times or those days that are hard. You'll be able to open your I knew it journal and be like, okay, so I was wrong about this one thing, but I've been right about so many other things. I may have not known something about this, but that doesn't mean I'm incapable and that doesn't mean I don't know what I'm talking about. Okay, and last, I'll always advocate for this rest without guilt for me. Rest is super important. My energy doesn't work where I can be like a machine or a generator where it just goes, goes, goes. My energy is already a certain amount in the day, and I have to use it accordingly. I have to do things that are aligned with me because when I'm not in alignment with my own energy, things go wrong. I feel more stressed, I feel irritable, and that burnout comes. Rest, learn that rest is not a reward. It is a requirement. Your softness is sacred. Honor it. You are allowed rest. You don't have to perform to feel loved. To be loved and to exists. You do not have to always be doing for others, do for yourself. Give yourself that time to rejuvenate. Give that time to yourself to recalibrate. Give that time to your softness. This is the time where we honor ourselves, and here is a lovely affirmation for you. I am allowed to move at the pace of safety. My inner voice is worthy of my trust. I am allowed to move at the pace of safety. My inner voice is worthy of my trust. Yeah, it is worthy of my trust. So we're doing all these four things, these four steps of ways to rebuild our self trust and healing is in the return. That's what I mentioned. You don't need to be fully healed to trust yourself. Again, that is not the purpose because healing is ongoing. It is a journey. It did not take a month or a day or a week. To get you to the mindset that you were at at the beginning of this episode. It took numerous experiences, numerous voices, people in your life to get your mindset to the way that it is now, these lived experiences that you had. So, it's okay. It's okay. You are still gonna find you and find your voice and get trust back and be that version of you who is a badass without being quote unquote, fully healed. I don't know a fully healed person. I don't even know what that means. All I know is that you're making progress if you are a better healed version of yourself than when you started your healing journey. Progress. Progress is healing. You don't have to feel brave to take a baby step. Do it afraid. Do it anxious, do it sad. Do it unknowingly. Do it despite all of the other feelings, because that's where bravery comes from. You taking the step that's bravery. You did it despite your fears. You did it despite your doubts. You did it despite the naysayers. You did it despite nervousness. Bravery comes after you take the step, not before. Every time you check in with your body, every time you choose. Peace over proving yourself. Every time you listen to that inner whisper, even if you can't explain it, you are rebuilding. Self-trust. That's not selfish. That's sacred. You're doing it, and I'm so proud of you for doing it, for taking the steps, and I hope you're proud of yourself. I hope that as you are returning to yourself. Rediscovering yourself because let me tell you, she was always within you. I always keep telling you guys that we are not creating anybody new. We are bringing out the person, the goddess, the queen within you who's been ready to come out. She was always within you. You always had the capability of being her, of being that girl you were always her and you will continue to be her. Now it's time to let her be out here. Okay? So before we close, I want us to reflect on this. What would it look like to parent yourself through this season, not punish yourself? What would it look like to parent yourself instead of punishing yourself through this season? Let's take the last two months of 2026 to parent ourselves. To be gentle with ourselves, to allow ourselves to make mistakes and not shun ourselves for those mistakes. Let's take the last remaining time of this year so that we can go into 2026 our cup more full than when we, entered 2025. Let's, it's already taken a lot from us. This year has been so crazy, and I'm sure each of you have been going through your own battles. So let your healing be gentle, let your progress be soft, and if you need a reminder, I got your boo. Come back to this space any time. I'm always here to support you. And you know where you can reach me. You can reach me on ig. You can email me at, Shay at shift happens with shay.com. You can reach out to me on LinkedIn. If you find me on there. I'm happy to be here wherever you need. I'm here for you. Okay. So with that being said, I do wanna continue this growth for us so that you can continue to live out that returning to you. It's not selfish, it's sacred. I. We'll be hosting an event December 6th at 11:00 AM Eastern Standard Time. It is a Saturday. I will be hosting my coming to Your Soft Era event and I hope to see you ladies there. Yes, I really enjoy, like, I really enjoy. These moments. I enjoy making space for you ladies, and I really wanna see you there. I want to help you succeed in your healing, whether I'm your therapist, whether I'm doing it through a workshop facilitating area, as a facilitator, I wanna be here to help you through your journey. Definitely join me on December 6th, because we're gonna get into it more about softness and what softness means to us, what our soft era looks like. We're gonna talk about some of the things such as like emotional labor. I have an episode on that where we talked about that, but we're gonna dive into that more because coming home to your soft era, we are reflecting on our year and we are bringing our vision of ourselves. Self that we know who's within us to life. This workshop, it's gonna be an hour and a half, so it's 11 to 1230. It will be through Zoom so anybody can join. But I am limiting the space to 15 women to preserve intimacy and that I want this to be a very soulful, experience for you. It is to nourish you. It is to soften you, and it is to reclaim yourself before the new year. You don't have to start new year, new me. You can reclaim yourself in 2025 before the year ends, and we could do it together. Okay? We're gonna release what? 2025 demanded of you. We're gonna step into 2026 with softness, intention, and rest. No, this is not a productivity masterclass. Nothing like that. Or like I said, a New Year's Resolution bootcamp. I don't believe in the always having to come up with a resolution. You just need to reclaim yourself. So if you are feeling burnt out, emotionally overextended, or just simply tired of holding it all, this workshop is your invitation to slow down, soften, and start again. Okay. So hope to see you guys there. If you are interested in joining that, you can find the event at RSVP at shift happens with Shay.com under my event tab. You could get started there if you haven't already, you can subscribe to my newsletter. All of it will be there for you to see. You can sign up that way. I mean, you'll see it on my LinkedIn page, you'll see it on my Instagram. You'll see the link on Facebook, wherever you see me, YouTube, whatnot. I will have the link there, but the event is on my website. All right, ladies, don't forget to subscribe. Leave a review, share this episode with a friend who's rebuilding trust in herself. I hope to see you guys December 6th, and I'm so excited to be back. I can't wait. I can't wait to be with you guys again. Remember, you're not alone. I adore you, love you all. You are becoming continue to be great. Oh, that Goddess is just deserves so much love and I'm happy for her. All right, boo. Bye.